


cicadas

by jeannedarc



Category: VIXX
Genre: Childhood Friends, Domestic, M/M, fluffy garbage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 03:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14155410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarc/pseuds/jeannedarc
Summary: "Can we get married at the same time?" Wonsik looks down at Jaehwan with a bit of wonderment in his eyes.Jaehwan nods, puffs his chest proudly. "I'll wait for you, Wonsikkie. You're my best friend. I'll always wait for you."





	cicadas

**Author's Note:**

> as my gift to my beautiful, wonderful, amazing beta, this is (a) what they wanted, and (b) completely unbeta'd. love you riley ♥

Their first summer vacation as best friends, they hardly even see their parents. Latchkeys, the both of them, left to their own devices because their moms and dads are busy working to support their educations at the fancy private school from which they'd just escaped. Jaehwan is seven, Wonsik six. They ride their bikes to the neighbourhood pool every day, get their fair share of skinned knees and sunburns, and almost don't make it home before the streetlights come on, night after night after night.

Wonsik's mother, one Saturday morning, packs her son a lunch big enough for two -- she smiles so big, too big, when Wonsik announces that he wants to go play with Jaehwan -- and sends him to the local park. "I'll come pick you up before dark, if you want," she tells Wonsik, who tries his best not to let on to the fact that he'd rather not have her pick him up at all. She drapes the stuffed lunchbox's strap over his shoulders and sends him on his way.

Jaehwan is in his front yard, a blue plastic shovel the likes of which someone usually takes to the beach in his hand, when Wonsik approaches, shy as ever. The lunch bag behind him bounces off his hip even as he tries to shift it behind himself, make it into something of a surprise. "Hi," Wonsik says, hands tightening around the handlebars of his bike. "Whatcha doin'?"

"Looking for worms." Jaehwan has recently lost a front tooth, and Wonsik does a bang-up job of acting like he isn't jealous of the gap in his sunshine smile, the maturity it implies. "Except there aren't a lot of 'em, 'cause it hasn't rained in forever."

Wonsik has never put much thought into where worms come from, and spends a little bit too long imagining that they rain down from the sky in sheets, the way the summer storms come in. He doesn't like that thought, tries to un-picture them wriggling out from between the clouds only to eventually drop down the back of his shirt. "Do you wanna go to the park?" he asks, trying to divert the flow of conversation anywhere but the train of thought running, off-track, through his brain.

Jaehwan seems to think about this for a long, long moment, then abandons his plastic shovel, his hunt for worms, in favour of running off to the garage and fetching his own bike.

They ride carefully, Wonsik's mother's warning to always watch for traffic echoed in the way he pauses at every bump in the sidewalk, in case he goes flying over the edge. Jaehwan teases him mercilessly. "Don't be a baby," he calls out, sailing on by so quick Wonsik barely has time to process him as more than a blur. But then Jaehwan circles back, a reverse attempt at catching up with his friend. Wonsik beams.

When they finally make it to the park, Jaehwan a little bit ahead, they abandon their bikes. "What's in the bag?" Jaehwan asks.

"My mom made us food," Wonsik crows excitedly. "We can have lunch and hang out here all afternoon."

Jaehwan claims the jungle gym for them, a monstrosity in the shape of a dome, sure to cause a broken arm if someone is dumb enough to fall from it. They're not like that, though, have been doing this as long as they can remember.

Wonsik climbs up behind Jaehwan, the bag on his back wobbling dangerously soon as he pulls the strap off over his head. He catches it at the last second, perches it on a bar between them, and offers Jaehwan an entire peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich, all his own. They eat mostly in silence, focused on the balancing act of sitting atop their kingdom, looking out and surveying their land.

"I'm married now," announces Jaehwan once they've moved on to Capri Suns.

"How are you married?" Wonsik's stomach does a little flip flop. He probably ate too fast.

"Yesterday I went to the pool without you, 'cause your mom said you couldn't play." Wonsik grumbles in response, remembering that he had called his sister ugly and ended up grounded for it. "And these girls wanted to play wedding, and I was the only boy there, so they married me."

"All of them?"

"Yeah." Jaehwan looks down at Wonsik with seriousness in his eyes. "I have three whole married ladies."

Wonsik wrinkles his nose in response, keeps quiet, mouth around the straw of his juice pouch. Being six, he hasn't put a whole lot of thought into marriage, save that apparently a lot of people who are a lot older than him do it. His mom watches all the shows on television where people are getting married, buying dresses, fighting about whose wedding is best, which Wonsik thinks is kind of silly, considering she's already married.

"Who'd you marry?" Wonsik asks at long last, dangling his feet, watching the shapes of the tiny shadows they create shift and reshift.

"I only knew Heeyeonnie," Jaehwan confesses, reaching into the bag and finding a banana. "Do you wanna share this?"

"No." He tries to remember Heeyeon, only comes up with the face of a girl who might have accidentally thrown a rock at him during school. "She's nice, I guess."

"If you come to the pool with me next week we can get you married too!" Jaehwan crows through a mouthful of banana mush. He throws the peel on the ground, and both of them giggle at the _splat_ sound it makes when it hits the gravel beneath them.

The thought of getting married, though, sets something uncomfortable roiling in Wonsik's stomach. "I don't wanna get married to some dumb girl," he announces, standing up on a bar and balancing on it, precarious but bold. "I don't wanna get married until I'm really, really old. Like twenty-five, at least."

Jaehwan, also bored from looking over the park in its entirety, secures the lunch bag by knotting the strap around a bar, then dangles a couple bars over from where Wonsik is standing. "That's pretty old," he agrees. "I'll tell them I can't be married to them. That's what my parents did when I was a baby. My mom told me about it once. But then I'll stay not married until..." He pauses to think on this. "At least until you get married, maybe."

"Can we get married at the same time?" Wonsik looks down at Jaehwan with a bit of wonderment in his eyes.

Jaehwan nods, puffs his chest proudly. "I'll wait for you, Wonsikkie. You're my best friend. I'll always wait for you."

\---

Being a year apart means their relationship and all its progress is measured in summer vacations, spring breaks, Christmases and New Years. It doesn't seem as obvious to them throughout elementary school, but the fact of their age gap, small as it may be, becomes that much more apparent when Jaehwan moves on to school. No longer does Wonsik see his best friend in the hallways, peek into windows to find him in the right classroom.

It's empty, but he survives it.

Being older, they get to stay out a little later, even going so far as to hang out at each other's homes after school. Jaehwan gets home later than Wonsik, so most of these gatherings happen at Wonsik's house, rather than Jaehwan's. They spend a lot of time in the living room, playing videogames, Wonsik's mother making them snacks on the rare occasion that she's there when they both arrive.

They have this tendency to elbow each other while gaming, trying to throw each other off, but Wonsik's a little bigger, a little stronger, accidentally takes it a little too far. Once Jaehwan ends up with a good punch to the gut that leaves him curled up on the floor, whimpering and clutching his stomach like it's going to fall out through the gaps in his fingers.

"Oh God, are you okay?" Wonsik hovers over him, their game exploding in the background, repeatedly, almost in perfect sync with each and every groan that leaves Jaehwan's mouth.

"No, you fuckin' killed me!" Jaehwan's gotten into this habit of swearing whenever he gets the chance, takes the most advantage of this during the times in which they're unsupervised. "I can't believe this shit!" He's howling, writhing in pain, and Wonsik knows well enough to say that he's probably exaggerating a little bit.

"Seriously, are you okay?" he asks, more bored now than concerned. He likes Jaehwan well enough -- they're best friends, after all -- but the theatrics get to be a bit much.

"I'll be fine," whines Jaehwan, sitting upright and lifting up his shirt, looking for bruises that most assuredly have yet to bloom.

Wonsik gets caught up just a little bit too long staring at the pale of Jaehwan's stomach, his chest, and looks away, flushing for reasons he's not entirely sure he understands. "Do you wanna keep playing or should I get you a popsicle?"

"Popsicle me, motherfucker," Jaehwan says around a grin, and stretches his arm behind him, in the general direction of the kitchen.

Wonsik smiles back. At least Jaehwan doesn't hate him. He doesn't know what he'd do with himself if that came to pass.

He retreats into the kitchen, finding the secret stash of Dreamsicles hidden under a bag of frozen peas, and comes back with one for each of them. His mom would kill him if she knew he knew about her top-secret ice cream, but then again, he would probably kill her for a lot of things, namely the number of tissues he's been blowing through the past couple months, the stolen bottle of lotion hidden in his nightstand drawer.

They eat their ice creams, and Jaehwan goes so far as to take a brave bite of his, whole mouth fitted around the end of it.

It isn't exactly a revelation, but Wonsik can't stop looking, can't fight the little bit of heat that rises to his cheeks.

Later that night, sprawled across Wonsik's bedroom floor, their noses buried in their respective comic books, a memory drifts back to Wonsik, albeit completely without his meaning for it to happen. "Hey, do you remember," and he doesn't really know how to approach this, is basically letting the words spill out of his mouth, "that time, the first summer we met, and you and me said we'd get married at the same time?"

Jaehwan doesn't even look up from his reading. "Yeah, of course," he says, airily, as if he'd just been thinking the exact same thing and wants it to be some big, cosmic coincidence. He kicks his feet in the air, and Wonsik knows that he's happy that they're having this conversation. "Why, did you forget?"

"I guess," Wonsik admits with a shrug, flipping a page. "I thought you had."

"I never," and here Jaehwan is very, very solemn, "forget a promise with my best friend."

"So it's still on?" Wonsik finally lifts his head so that he and Jaehwan can exchange gazes. In answer, Jaehwan raises one hand, pinky extended -- a promise.

They lock pinkies, and Jaehwan makes one of those gleeful noises, the annoying ones that he knows Wonsik hates. For that he earns a very deliberate punch in the shoulder, which ends in them wrestling, wrecking the rug, a ticklefight.

\---

Two years later and this is the last summer they're going to spend together, as far as either of them can tell. Wonsik's father received a promotion toward the end of the school year; his parents had bought a new house without even doing he and his sister the common courtesy of telling them first. His house looks emptier every single day, everything being loaded into boxes and sealed away with way too much packing tape. His life has become an exercise in escapism.

In an act of defiance, he hasn't packed a single thing, instead staying out as late as he can get away with, every night spent on that same park he remembers from his childhood, Jaehwan by his side.

"Truth or dare?" They're sitting on the swings, kicking their feet uselessly, too tired, too occupied to really go through with pumping themselves into the air. Jaehwan is slowly making his way through one of those fruity sodas with way too much sugar. Cherry. It's staining his lips red in a manner that can only be described as pretty. Wonsik calls everything he does pretty, lately, though he doesn't really mean to do it; it comes out of his mouth without any control on his part.

"What are you talking about," he mumbles, trying to fend off the depression that's been hovering over his head all evening and failing spectacularly. He keeps his gaze pinned to the shape of Jaehwan's lips as he speaks, drinks, breathes. Safe to say his friendship has morphed over the years, and he doesn't know that he's uncomfortable with that.

"I said," and Jaehwan singsongs in that lovely voice of his, "truth or dare?"

"Oh, uh..." Still processing through every thought in his head -- trust, it's a lot of thoughts -- Wonsik stumbles to make a decision. "I guess dare."

Jaehwan's got that evil glint in his eye, the one saved for times when he knows something Wonsik doesn't. "I dare you to kiss me, then."

"What?" It rolls over him, heavy, but slow, the metaphorical raincloud over his head bursting. "You want me to..."

"I said kiss me," and here Jaehwan gets pouty, fending for himself in the way of getting attention. "You've thought about it. You're looking at my mouth right now."

Wonsik wants to lie, to deny it, but the truth bubbles up in him, roiling until all those years of friendship are something more. This is the now or never. "But I'm not gonna see you again," he reminds Jaehwan.

"You're moving across town, not across the country," Jaehwan points out with a roll of his eyes. "Please kiss me, Wonsikkie? I've been thinking about it all night and I might just _die_ if you move next weekend and I don't know whether or not you're a good kisser."

It's over before it starts, really, Wonsik leaning over in his swing. The chains keeping him suspended from the bar above rattle just past his head. He presses his lips to Jaehwan's, relishing in the cold of them caused by that cherry soda, a stark contrast to the summer heat. But then it's finished, just a brief moment, and when he pulls away, Jaehwan touches his fingertips to his bottom lip.

Wonsik, for what it's worth, wants a do-over, something more memorable.

As if God is listening, Jaehwan grins that evil grin of his, leans over the swings and kisses Wonsik again.

The next weekend, as predicted, he moves across town. Jaehwan helps him pack at the last possible minute, but they aren't so good at packing in any orderly fashion as they are at waiting for Wonsik's dad to check on their progress, then stealing kisses behind the door soon as it closes. Their last night together, they promise, voices matching hushed whispers, that the distance isn’t going to tear them apart, that their friendship is more important than whatever comes between them. They seal the swear with a series of kisses that leave them burning up, their pinkies locked together.

\---

That year, their relationship is marked by weekends, Jaehwan spending whatever time he can at Wonsik’s since Wonsik, apparently, isn’t old enough to go all the way across town to visit a friend.

They kiss by starlight, in that same park in which they’d played as children, hiding beneath the safety of the dome that comprises their old jungle-gym throne. They stay out as long as they want. Wonsik is thirteen years old and he wants nothing more than this -- except, perhaps, a little less distance between himself and this boy for whom he’s fallen completely.

Every time they part, though, it’s a miniature period of mourning. They say goodbye at the last possible second, if they say goodbye at all. Jaehwan claims that he hates goodbyes, make a point that he says ‘see you later’ instead. Wonsik doesn’t get it, not entirely, but Jaehwan offers that smile, comforting, and kisses both of Wonsik’s cheeks. “I’ll see you in a week.”

But eventually high school gets to be a little too much. The visits become less frequent as Jaehwan’s home life becomes more and more tumultuous. Wonsik has to do something, because he’ll be damned if he’s going to lose Jaehwan to anything, up to but not excluding time or space.

Those two AM phone calls get more and more. Jaehwan cries and it tears at Wonsik’s heartstrings. “I just want to be able to _see_ you,” he sobs, and each little breath he gasps is a stab. “They can’t keep me from seeing you.”

“Please take care of yourself,” and it sounds so much like goodbye that Wonsik can’t stand it. He’s already on his computer, looking up how to bring them closer together. “Please. Don’t get in trouble for me. It’s not worth it.”

Jaehwan keeps quiet for such a long moment that Wonsik is sure he’s cried himself to sleep. “You’re worth everything to me.”

Wonsik doesn’t know how to fathom this. He barely even understands what love _is_ , let alone how he’s deserving of so much.

It is not by coincidence that they end up going to the same high school -- Wonsik works his ass off on a video of himself doing some dance routines he'd thought up himself during his last year of middle school. He gets accepted to a private school specialising in the musical and performing arts -- the same one Jaehwan had spent a year bragging about. It had been a bit of a struggle to convince his parents that public transit was okay, and that he would be safe, and that his mom didn't need to bring him to and from school and risk being late to her job every day

They haven't seen each other in a couple months and the majority of their relationship since the move has been conducted via phone, text, email, social media, but for the first time in their entire lives, their relationship isn't measured by the nights during which cicadas cry.

Wonsik climbs the steps to the school two at a time on the first day of his freshman year. He greeted by a far-too-enthusiastic Jaehwan, who wraps him up in arms that Wonsik thought, previously, he'd never feel again. He wants to kiss Jaehwan, again and again, but Jaehwan has other plans.

"I want you to meet my friends," he announces, holding Wonsik at arm's length, obviously checking him out, studying the fit of his proper private school uniform. "I've told them everything about you. And I think...I told you some stuff about them? Maybe?"

He doesn't mean to be, but Wonsik is struck with an odd little tingle of jealousy, that Jaehwan's friends should get more attention than Wonsik himself. He shrugs it off, tucks Jaehwan under his arm, sneakily dots a kiss to his cheek. "I can't wait to meet them," he says, figuring his jealousy is probably stupid.

They zigzag endlessly through hallways -- Wonsik barely has time to learn the layout of the place -- before coming to an empty auditorium. Almost empty, he corrects himself. Someone is on the stage, dancing their heart out for an audience of one. The strange part is not the fervor with which he dances, but rather the fact that there is no music save his audience's voice, singing a song that Wonsik actually doesn't know.

The song ends quickly, and Wonsik and Jaehwan, skittering down the descending staircase at an alarming pace, applaud. Jaehwan, as ever, is loud as hell, doesn't care how much attention he gets. Wonsik stays reserved, even when the dancer in question takes a deep bow, practically folding himself in half at the accolades.

"Hakyeon," and Jaehwan's doing that sing-song thing that makes Wonsik's heart do backflips, "this is my best friend. His name's Wonsik and he just started here."

The dancer -- Hakyeon -- makes a face that probably reads delight, not that anyone can tell because his fringe is dripping sweat directly in his eyes. "Hi Wonsik, I'm Hakyeon." Hakyeon points to his audience -- a moody-looking dude who, judging by the lemon-sour set of his mouth, would rather be anywhere but here right now -- and offers him a wave. "That's my best friend Taekwoon."

Taekwoon kind of smiles. A little. It's more like a grimace. Wonsik can't help but laugh, but shuts up immediately when Jaehwan gives him a less-than-kind elbow to the stomach, reminiscent of all those summers ago.

"Can we all give Wonsikkie the tour?" Jaehwan is bouncing on the balls of his feet. Taekwoon looks pained by the suggestion, but when Hakyeon jumps off the stage, barefoot, and gives him a tug to the ear, he nods his agreement.

"We'd love to," Hakyeon says warmly, and his chest heaves with exertion but Wonsik can't hear it in his voice. It's a talent. He has a lot to learn from his seniors here, he supposes.

Jaehwan makes this noise that...is not super far off from a screeching harpy, and pulls Hakyeon and Wonsik into this group hug, encompassing them both.

\---

That evening, when the last class has ended, Jaehwan makes a point of walking Wonsik to his bus stop, their hands intertwined the entire way. "What do you think of the school?" He's just chattering away, even though Wonsik's tired, and really wants to nap, and really doesn't want to talk about much of anything. "And Hakyeon? Oh, God, he's the best, isn't he?"

For his part, Wonsik keeps extremely quiet, listening to Jaehwan go on and on. Truthfully, he's caught up in his own head, in how overwhelming it is that his teachers expect him to just _know_ things. He's trying to count how many times he'd had to explain that no, they didn't teach this at his last school because it wasn't a specialty school of any kind, and that no, he's not stupid, he's just trying to be quiet an actually learn something.

Not even Jaehwan can fix how utterly out of his element Wonsik is, but that doesn't stop him from trying.

They reach the bus stop, and Jaehwan takes Wonsik's face in his hands, thumbs over the hollows beneath his eyes. Funny enough, Wonsik didn't even realise until Jaehwan is brushing away his frustrated tears that he'd been crying the whole time.

"What's wrong?" is all Jaehwan has to say.

Wonsik spills his guts about his day in class, the times during which Jaehwan hadn't been there to hold his hand through the criticism, sobbing like a complete fool. "I just," and he sniffles, loud, nose dripping a little bit, "I didn't know it was going to be so hard?"

Jaehwan regards him quietly, inner corner of his lips caught between his teeth. Then he nods, careful, as if Wonsik is some kind of animal Jaehwan is afraid of spooking. "I should have warned you," he says, by way of apology, and kisses the trail of tears streaking down Wonsik's cheek. Wonsik tries to duck away from it, but he's too exhausted to pretend to be embarrassed by all this affection.

"It's okay," Wonsik tells him, fitting arms around his wrists. "It's fine. As long as you're there with me at the end of the day, I'll be fine, okay?"

Jaehwan looks doubtful, but nods along anyway, and kisses the very corner of Wonsik's mouth.

The bus pulls up to the curb, and Wonsik doesn't want to go, doesn't want to leave Jaehwan standing here. True to form, though, Jaehwan's got one final trick up his sleeve. "Hey," he says as Wonsik turns to board the bus. "I want you to be my boyfriend."

Wonsik doesn't know what to say; that much must be clear by the look on his face. "Don't answer me right now. I'll see you tomorrow and you can tell me then?" Here, Jaehwan has it in him to look shy, like he didn't just ask the question they've both been waiting to breach for what feels like their entire lives.

With a final smile, he kisses Jaehwan's nose, then boards the bus, lets it carry him away home, though he's fairly certain he could float there on his own.

\---

Graduation changes everything, or so Wonsik's been told. Hakyeon and Taekwoon -- two of his closest friends -- warned him about it when he was a sophomore, and Jaehwan's spent the last nine months trying to do the same.

The thing, though, is that nothing particularly feels different.

He is stuffed into an ugly cap and gown, the shiny fabric scritching uncomfortably at his skin. Somewhere on the other side of the auditorium, the performance orchestra is practicing their rendition of Pomp and Circumstance, and it isn't going too well. The only friend Wonsik has his age, Hongbin, is watching intently, lips pursed, as Wonsik straightens and restraightens the cap, trying his best to hide his bleach-blond hair. Eventually he gets tired of it, snatches the cap off Wonsik's head, smacks him with it, a blow laid right to the side of his face.

"It's fine. No one is going to know you lost the bet." Hongbin is snickering behind his hand, earning a powerful glower from Wonsik.

"We don't talk about the bet," he says in his deepest, darkest whisper. He does not want to think about the fraction of a point between his own GPA and Hongbin's, the fact that the photos of his graduation will feature him with almost no hair of which to speak. He should know better, by now, than to make bets with Hongbin.

Jaehwan is late. He probably doesn't mean to be; university leaves him with even less time to poorly manage than he had in the first place. But he hasn't sent any messages, hasn't given any hint as to why he would be late, and Wonsik knows his schedule well enough to be aware that he doesn't have any classes this late in the day.

He peeks out from behind the curtain, scans the seemingly infinite heads that pop up from the rows of chairs lining the auditorium floor. Hongbin's got a hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him back. "He'll be here," he says, with as much sympathy as someone like Hongbin can actually muster. "You just have to be patient."

Wonsik is endlessly patient, has been for what seems like his entire life, but today is not a day in which he can fathom waiting, waiting, waiting on his boyfriend. He's so nervous he's sure his heart is going to pop right out of his chest. He goes back to fiddling with his hat until Hongbin smacks him with his own, as well.

Eventually, though, the managers of the graduation program -- the teachers who had brought up Wonsik, had been good enough to him to write him letters of recommendation in order to get into the same art-focused university Jaehwan attends -- start ushering everyone to their seats. Wonsik gives one last look around, tries to find Jaehwan.

He's there, in the back, far away from Wonsik's family, clustered instead with Taekwoon and Hakyeon, who watch on like proud fathers themselves. He gives a huge, enthusiastic wave, smiling so big that it catches the quickly-dimming theatre lights, and blows Wonsik a kiss.

At least, Wonsik thinks, smiling a little himself in relief, he can do this now. At least Jaehwan is here.

When the ceremony is over and he's got this gold-embossed diploma he has absolutely no idea what to do with, he shuffles over to his family. His mom is crying. His dad might be a little misty eyed. His sister pulls him into a giant hug. "We're going out for lunch. Do you want to bring some friends along?" his dad asks, an arm wrapped around his mom's shaking shoulders.

He doesn't even have to look around, because Jaehwan saunters right up to them, the two-headed amalgamation that is the Taekwoon-and-Hakyeon friendship in tow. They are both crying, and Hakyeon goes so far as to hug Wonsik's mother by way of introduction. Taekwoon is inconsolable, and Jaehwan is trying his best to be kind, but really, he's not good at dealing with the deluge.

"These are my friends. And, um, Jaehwan. You remember Jaehwan, right? From...everything?" Wonsik regards his crying parents, both pairs, with nervousness, both hands wrapped so tight around the edge of his diploma book that his knuckles turn white. "He's, uh, my boyfriend."

He doesn't even mean to say it, though the way in which he does makes it seem deliberate on his part. Jaehwan and Wonsik flush in perfect tandem.

There's this brief, almost imperceptible moment of tension in which neither Wonsik nor his family know what to do, but then Jiwon is throwing her arms around Jaehwan, shrieking, "I knew it! I _knew_ it!" She pulls him into this enormous hug, and Jaehwan _oof_ s with the way she squishes him tight. "Welcome to the family! We've been waiting for you!"

His parents laugh, too, that tension broken as quickly as it had formed. "We're going out for lunch," he tells Jaehwan, and Taekwoon and Hakyeon too, "if you wanted to come along. Mom said I could invite all of you if I wanted."

\---

That night is their first in Jaehwan's new place. It's a junky apartment for which he'd saved every penny over the last two years, scrimping on date nights and his favourite weekly rituals so they could have a space of their own. Wonsik had gotten a part-time job in the last semester and contributed what he could, his acceptance letter having come early and he doing well enough to kind of coast his way through.

The guilt egged at him from time to time, that he wasn't doing enough, and when he called Jaehwan at three in the morning, unable to sleep for fear of his lack of help in this situation, Jaehwan had been a comfort, a calm and reasonable voice. "You're doing fine, Wonsikkie," he had murmured in that soothing voice of his. "You're doing amazing and I love you no matter how much you give. I'm doing this for us, not to make you feel bad."

The apartment is a studio, and there's a mattress laid out in the living room, and there's a tiny couch that Jaehwan probably found on some street corner, and there's no room to do anything, really, but Wonsik loves it immediately. He feels so...grown. Just for a second, anyway. The glee of having finished high school at long last, combined with moving in with the first -- the only -- love of his life are equally heady, and together they overwhelm him to a point that some moments, he forgets to breathe.

They christen the new place on that mattress, Jaehwan whispering sweetnesses into Wonsik's flushed skin, over and over, just that enough to get him off. He has never felt so cared for, so loved, so appreciated as he does in that moment. When he's buried inside Jaehwan it's the most complete he's ever been.

Home isn't a paradise, of course.

The refrigerator never closes on the first try, but they learn to kick it shut anyway, after a horrible incident in which all their fresh groceries had gone spoiled over the course of one particularly hot night. The subway passes by their window, rattling everything they try to hang on their walls, but they adjust to it and on the rare weekends when Wonsik goes home to his family for whatever reason -- holidays, more often than not -- he can't sleep without the sound of its passage filling his ears. There is a leak that only happens when the upstairs neighbours flush their toilet.

It is their home, though, their kingdom. They make it their own, various smatterings of their personalities scattered around the cardboard box of a room in which they live. Jaehwan does his best to keep it clean, and Wonsik comes behind him to make sure his effort doesn't go to waste. Neither of them can cook when they move in together, but a couple months in Jaehwan surprises Wonsik by learning to cook exactly one thing -- pancakes. They have pancakes every night for two weeks, dinner lit yellow by the single bulb hanging over their kitchen table and they playing footsie under the table until finally Wonsik says, "Babe, I really think we need to learn to make something else. I love you, but I didn't even like pancakes before this."

Jaehwan just laughs and agrees. They watch tutorials online. By the end of the month their repertoire expands to about five different meals apiece, and they cook depending on whose shift runs later, whose lecture ends first.

At times they have so little money that the only thing they can afford to do is turn on the air-conditioner, but those are the best days, snuggled up on their disintegrating couch, all slow kisses and quick, habitual affections. They learn to ignore the roiling in their stomachs that scream for something substantial to eat, promise they’ll feast the next time one of them get paid.

Times like these, they argue. Jaehwan is insecure. Wonsik is worried about the future. It’s a recipe for disaster, empty bellies and full heads. But they never go to sleep angry. It’s one of the unspoken promises, the kind that don’t need pinkies.

They both work. They both attend class. They make time for one another, make a point of date night despite the fact that they are busy, because God, Wonsik wouldn't even _be here_ if not for Jaehwan. He knows that. And Jaehwan says as much all the time, an echo of every thought Wonsik has that he can't even begin to fathom saying aloud. Instead he expresses himself in little cares, in adding new flavours to old recipes and running that extra cycle through the dryer at the communal laundromat so they don't have to hang everything around the apartment.

Wonsik doesn't even think he's seen his own parents so in love, but then again, he can't see much beyond the brilliance of Jaehwan's smile.

\---

At the end of their second year, when Wonsik is so exhausted from university life and working a nearly full-time job on top of it that he's sure he's going to collapse, Jaehwan asks him to do something unheard-of. "Can you do me a favour?" he asks, and he's batting his eyelashes in that way that Wonsik knows means he's about to say something ridiculous and wants forgiveness in advance. "Can you clear your schedule this Saturday night? Me and the... uh, the everyone kind of wanted to go out to dinner. I would really like it if you were there."

That's their language, these days, making sure to express appreciation. Wonsik doesn't miss it, is in fact rather fond of it. He doesn't know how he's going to explain this to his manager, but he'll figure out a way, he decides as he dots a kiss to the apple of Jaehwan's cheek. "Yeah, of course," he agrees, and goes back to folding the endless mound of laundry he's just finished.

It is a little odd, he thinks, that Jaehwan would make a point to make sure he's there rather than just going and hanging out with their friends by himself. That's what they usually do whenever one of them is too busy -- go along, offer their apologies for their other half. A routine of theirs.

He can't help that he gets a little suspicious that there's some kind of plot here. It mounts when he's pulling another overnight at the convenience store, and mounts when he's in the apartment alone and Jaehwan is away unloading groceries from a truck, and mounts when they're eating dinner in that contented silence that is only theirs. Finally Wonsik can take no more of the pressure building in his ears, in his skin, in his heart, and sends a frantic message to Jaehwan.

> **me:** What are you gonna do  
>  **babe:** wym  
>  **me:** Tomorrow night, what are you gonna do  
>  **babe:** you're being weird, im not gonna do anything  
>  **me:** WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO JAEHWANIE I CANT TAKE IT  
>  **babe** wait and see (๑♡3♡๑)  
>  **me:** why are you doing this to me

So he waits, as he's told, obedient to a fault. It doesn't assuage the nervousness coating every surface of him, to know that _something_ is happening, but any knowledge is better than none at all. For a solid twenty-four hours he sits on his hands, more often than not in the literal sense of the term. The only comfort he gets is the soft, slow makeout session that he and Jaehwan squeeze in on Saturday afternoon, pressed against the glass of their shower door, both their skin still slick with condensation.

It’s a good comfort. It’s enough, for the moment.

They meet their friends at their favourite restaurant, one of those places that is made entirely of solid oak and pretends to be fancy but serves a step up from bar food. They've been going here since Wonsik started high school, Friday nights spent with the elders trying to sneak their juniors drinks under the table only to regret their mistakes when they had to somehow get the drunk babies home to their families.

Reservations had been for a booth big enough for six. Wonsik wants to know how Jaehwan knows that in specific, but Jaehwan fixes him with this look that says it's better not to ask questions. They make their way around the familiar restaurant layout, find their reserved seats. Hakyeon and Hongbin hold hands under the table and everyone is kind enough to pretend not to see, though Jaehwan definitely has a bit of 'I told you so' in his smile when he greets them. Taekwoon has brought his new boyfriend, a freshly-graduated kid named Sanghyuk, still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, not yet destroyed by university life. For just a split-second, Wonsik envies him, though later he can't quite put a name to the reason why.

Jaehwan orders a pretty expensive bottle of champagne, much to Wonsik's bewilderment. Hakyeon makes a face, and Sanghyuk has to explain that he isn't old enough to drink yet, but even still -- where did he get the money for all this? They've struggled to make bills in the past couple months. ( _Maybe this is why,_ Wonsik's intuition tells him, and that in and of itself sets alarm bells off in Wonsik's head.)

Those who drink have their glasses in front of them when Jaehwan taps a nail against the side of his, clinking for attention. Dread forms, white-hot and heavy, in the pit of Wonsik's stomach. He wills it away by finishing his glass. "I brought you all here for a purpose," and Jaehwan's using all the theatre training he's ever had, projecting, creating a beautiful stage for a monologue. "Today is a very special day that deserves celebration, and there's no better way to do that than to do it than with the best friends a drama queen like me could ask for."

While the rest hoot and holler their agreement, Wonsik racks his brain, trying to figure out the significance of today, and -- oh, _shit_ , it's a year to the day since he and Jaehwan moved in together.

How is he so stupid? He knows how this story ends.

Jaehwan looks at the face of each of his friends, grinning like a lovesick puppy might. Then he turns to Wonsik and takes both his hands, threads their fingers together. "My baby boy, my best friend for my whole actual life," he says quietly, and the heat rises in Wonsik's face so quick he's sure he's going to melt. "My entire world. You've always been there for me through the best and the worst times. You've been there when we were bored kids. You've been there when we were angsty teenagers."

"We're still kind of angsty teenagers," Wonsik points out with a laugh. Jaehwan shushes him with a kiss.

"You've been there when I finally came out to my parents," he continues, and the room gets solemn, "and things weren't exactly easy, that first year of dorm living when I was on my own and they wouldn't talk to me, but you made it bearable. You made it pretty damn perfect, actually."

Wonsik feels himself tearing up. He knows, he _knows_ , and even if he wanted to stop it he couldn't.

"And this last year has been the most amazing year of my whole life. I dunno about you," and Jaehwan flashes this conspiratorial wink, the sort in which he specialises, "but I kind of want to make a habit of years like this one."

Then he's climbing under the table -- Hongbin definitely doesn't crack a joke about giving Wonsik head here in front of everyone -- and when he pokes out again he perches on one knee.

"No," moans Wonsik, though he doesn't mean no, and when he buries his face in his hands everyone gets the idea.

When he slots his fingers to peer through them, Jaehwan is just looking up at him, hands clasped, eyes huge and beautiful. "Remember when we were kids, and we promised to get married at the same time?"

Wonsik doesn't even care; these are his friends, so he's crying openly. He nods.

Jaehwan opens his hands, reveals a band on a thick chain. "So let's get married together," he says with all the world's wonder in his voice.

In answer, Wonsik gets down on the floor with Jaehwan, cups his cheeks in both palms and kisses him square on the mouth. Their friends cheer them on, Sanghyuk even going so far as to bang on the table. They don't care, because they are too wrapped up in one another to even hear what's going on behind them.

"I love you so much," Wonsik breathes when at last they part.

"I love you more," Jaehwan replies, easy as inhale, exhale. He puts the chain around Wonsik's neck, plays with the ring. "You can wear it if you want," he points out, "on your finger? I just didn't know if it went with your other ones."

Wonsik laughs despite himself. "I'll change the other ones," he mumbles, and kisses Jaehwan again.

\---

They get married the next summer. Their wedding is marked by the endless chirping of cicadas, by a sunset so beautiful they have to wear sunglasses in all their photos. Wonsik's family is there, and Jiwon has never been so excited for anything in her entire life. She makes very sure to let both grooms know that they are the best thing that ever happened to her. She might be a little drunk. Wonsik doesn't tell his parents anything, and if they know, they don't say, either.

Jaehwan's brother shows up, apologises on behalf of their parents. "It's okay," Jaehwan tells his brother, smiling and hugging him like it means more to him than anything ever has. It does. Wonsik knows this for a fact.

The ceremony is simple -- they aren't one for forcing their friends to sit through things that aren't comfortable, mainly because their friends won't actually _sit_ so much as do whatever they can within the bounds of respectful protest. The reception, however, is stunning. Hakyeon planned it himself; how could it be anything else?

Every time someone calls for them to kiss, Wonsik and Jaehwan cheerfully follow orders. Every time someone speaks to them, they don't look the intruder in the eye for a long minute, too busy being lost in one another's eyes, winding fingers together atop the table.

That night, when most of the guests have departed, when the newlyweds are sprawled out in a limousine on their way to the airport -- Wonsik's family paid for an entire honeymoon, wherever they wanted, no questions asked -- they lean their heads against each other's. Jaehwan hums a pop song they'd heard played twice during the party. Wonsik dozes off on Jaehwan's shoulder, though he doesn't mean to.

"We have this whole new life," Jaehwan mumbles mid-bar.

"I've always had life with you," murmurs Wonsik as sleep takes him.

**Author's Note:**

> as always catch me violating the [twitterscape](http://twitter.com/takoyaken) and avoiding responsibilities like ᵘʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰ update schedules maybe


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